Ethnic Theme Housing and its affect on the Stanford Latino Community
This entry is part of a research project for Cultural Interfaces and Cross-Cultural Rhetoric at Stanford University. For more about this assignment and the class projects, click here.
At Stanford there exists an incredibly cohesive Latino community, commonly referred to as La Comunidad. Last year during my freshman year, I lived in the Latino ethnic theme dorm called Casa Zapata, and for the very first time in my life I was a minority. Perhaps because of my outgoing personality, or the fact that I was able to win chili pepper eating contests, I soon became fully integrated into the Latino community at Zapata. My research question is one that I have pondered for two years: why is the Latino community so strong at Stanford?
From my positive experience in Casa Zapata and my involvement in Comunidad activities, I am exploring the positive aspects of an ethnic community, but as a part of my research I have also incorporated negative viewpoints. An interesting source from The Stanford Review, the conservative newspaper on campus, directly attacked ethnic theme housing, stating: “Since its inception, the Review has vehemently opposed ethnic housing primarily on the basis that it supports racial separatism.” While I ardently disagree with the proposition of the article to abandon all ethnic theme housing at Stanford, it does raise a valid concern that within the system of ethnic themed housing, residents tend to group together into cohesive social groups. This happens at any dormitory setting, and race is not a key factor. To say that ethnic theme housing promotes racism is outrageous, but there does come to be a problem of broadening the social spectrum.
In contrast to the Review article, I have found that not all and not even the majority of Latinos at Stanford live in ethnic themed housing, but rather the existence of the physical theme house and the Chicano center (El Centro Chicano) provides a place to congregate, or just hang out. In an interview with a Latina student who does not consider herself to be an integral part of comunidad, she remarked quite frankly that the community would accept her if she wanted to become more involved. This sense of openness in the community extends beyond the walls of Casa Zapata and even across racial differences, such as in my personal case.
In my research thus far, I have explored many different facets of La Comunidad at Stanford, but I have also considered that part of its success may be attributable to the surrounding Latino community of the San Francisco Bay Area. While I have not conducted any field research outside of Stanford, I plan to attend Cinco de Mayo festivities this weekend in East Palo Alto, a nearby community to Stanford. With this research I hope to correlate the activities of the community outside of Stanford to La Comunidad.